Possum1

I have re-posted my reply from another thread to here as it is more relevant to this thread: [From Old Man Emu and Aviation Trader] Obviously this is an awful ad, highly discriminatory and all negative. Someone on the pension is supposed to be too ill or too old to do all this work - and there is a lot of daily manual labour in this job. In addition to his normal caretaker duties, the current and outgoing caretaker has just finished a complete rebuild of the tractor engine for no charge to the owner!This exact same ad was used last year when the previous caretakers advised the owner in April, of their intention to leave and foolishly told her that they would stay until she found a replacement. It took until September to find the current caretaker who is now also leaving. The previous caretakers became so desperate that they put a much more pleasantly worded ad in greynomadsjobs.com and in facebook as well, leaving out the requirement to be on the pension. I draw my own conclusions about why such an obnoxious ad would be placed that no-one in their right mind would answer. There is no mention about what a thoroughly pleasant and peaceful spot the airfield is or that there is a golf club 5 minutes drive away with stunning views that serves a better and bigger breakfast than what the aero club offers, and for $5 less.

Just spotted this thread. I totally agree with above. Please see my post about this and other Straddie matters on the related thread, "Straddie Aero Club closes" "...as long as the island has at least 3G internet." If you are with Telstra you won't get any reception at all - maybe occasionally one bar. The airfield is in a valley and the transmitter points to the town. Also, if you want water, it is bore water and must be pumped to a gravity tank.

Of course there were many more reasons than these and they are certainly common causes of club failures e.g. misappropriation of club funds and conflicts of interest.

Obviously this is an awful ad, highly discriminatory and all negative. Someone on the pension is supposed to be too ill or too old to do all this work - and there is a lot of daily manual labour in this job. In addition to his normal caretaker duties, the current and outgoing caretaker has just finished a complete rebuild of the tractor engine for no charge to the owner! This exact same ad was used last year when the previous caretakers advised the owner in April, of their intention to leave and foolishly told her that they would stay until she found a replacement. It took until September to find the current caretaker who is now also leaving also. The previous caretakers became so desperate that they put a much more pleasantly worded ad in greymomadsjobs.com and in facebook as well, leaving out the requirement to be on the pension. I draw my own conclusions about why such an obnoxious ad would be placed that no-one in their right mind would answer. There is no mention about what a thoroughly pleasant and peaceful spot the airfield is or that there is a golf club 5 minutes drive away with stunning views that serves a better and bigger breakfast than what the aero club offers, and for $5 less.

For those of you who fly to various fly-in breakfasts in SEQ, it was announced yesterday(17/2/18) at the very belated 2016/17 club AGM, that the club was closing and no further memberships would be accepted. The club has been operating a $20 fly-in breakfast at Dunwich Airfield, North Stradbroke Island, with many poorly advertised cancellations in the last few years and only six fly-in breakfasts out of twelve in 2017. It was announced that the club's president, who is also sole director and shareholder of Stradbroke Air P/L, which operates the airfield, will run a breakfast through her company instead. The reasons given for the closure of the club were lack of volunteers to run the breakfast and no nominations at all for any of the committee positions. The club's assets of tables, chairs, umbrellas, cooking equipment, cutlery, crockery and one 6m x 3m two-room donga may be of interest to other clubs who might want to acquire them when they become available in the near future. No-one could answer the question of how the company was going to operate a breakfast without any tables or chairs! It would appear that the decks are being cleared for the sale of Dunwich Airfield Head Lease, which was canvassed in this other thread last year: North Stradbroke airpark ad?

Maybe you can - see here:

Excellent photos as usual, Graham. They sure do.1. At least a dozen aircraft parked on the Rwy 33 taxiway, blocking it and blowing sand on to the leasehold areas, hangars etc and making aircraft backtrack on the runway on such a busy day. 2. I note that Harvey(VH-WED) couldn't even get into his own hangar because of aircraft parked in front of it and has had to park on the taxiway too. 3. Is that Molly I spy under the breakfast table and serving area to bring joy to the heart of the Council Health Inspector?

The council would have had ALA Compliance Inspection Reports based on CAAP 92 recommendations done on each airfield and because neither airfield would entirely comply with CAAP 92, they think they will have to spend millions to make it comply and if they don't people will sue them. No-one can convince them that CAAP 92 does not contain laws or regulations, just recommendations and any users of the airfield just do the best they can with what airfield conditions actually exist. In addition, some employee at the council has to be named as the person responsible by law for the veracity of all obstacles, notams etc. in updating the airfield details each year to Airservices Australia with 50 penalty point Strict Liability offences in place for those who don't comply. Who on a council would put their hand up for this job? So they get rid of the responsibility of running the airfield, but still want to make money out of it so let it operate at someone else's risk.

NAIPS is still offline though. It let me in briefly once about 2.00 pm this afternoon but no joy since. I got as far as the TAFs and the new Graphical Area forecasts at the end of the report.

Just don't make the mistake of having the hangars fronting the runway. If you can afford it, have taxiways running off the runway and have hangar, chalet sites etc. fronting onto those taxiways. Good luck.

No, but an interactive game might be a possibility. Here in Queensland there is a proposal to have the Driver's Licence Theory test changed to an interactive course because the little darlings are incapable of swotting up on the road traffic rule book(books are so like yesterday), learning the rules by studying said rule book and taking the test. Too much for their attention spans, I suppose.

Bull, I think you could have charged for the dinner at least.

Recreational Flying website now does not work on Internet Explorer 9. It did last week.

Hopefully the insurance company who wrote your club/airfield's public liability policy whom you honestly informed of the number of warm bodies who were likely to turn up, the number of volunteer helpers and the number of fly-ins held per annum.

Here is the same old argument about the definitions of "general" and "specific" which makes CAR 206 such a thrilling read! My reading of the definition of Fly-in in the Air Display Administration and Procedure Manual, Appendix F(4) "...A gathering of aircraft at an event or competition where the general public have been specifically invited to the event..." means just that. Well, don't specifically advertise to the general public or invite them. Do what Downunder suggests, "I'm all for a "flyers" flyin. The public not excluded but they can take it or leave it.... A flyin made for aviation enthusiasts, pilots, aircraft owners and the like." Mentioning/advertising a breakfast or BBQ fly-in on this site or the Aviation Trader or a notice on an airfield/club's noticeboard is hardly specifically inviting the general public but is incidentally attracting them if they happen to be interested in aviation and passing by the notice. Ever noticed how many newsagents stock the Aviation Trader, let alone have on display more than 2-3 copies? Hardly a specific targeting of the general public. Just because some notice of a fly-in could randomly be viewed by a member of the general public does not mean one is specifically targeting them.

No worries Old Koreelah. I have flown between Archerfield and Stanthorpe about 6 times per year for the last 20 years and I always have weather alternative routes across these mountains. There is one useful gap to the north of Cunningham's Gap that I have used and 3-4 gaps to the south-east over to Mount Superbus. These all have roughly parallel valleys leading up to them from the direction of Warwick. In less than ideal weather I try to be flexible about which route I take and it helps if Amberley is de-active as it is one less thing to worry about. On a windy but clear day, I go as high as I can. At 7,500 ft, the crossing can often be quite smooth. The gap via Mt Lindesay is the lowest of them all but is such a detour that I have not used it for many years. Also the cloud base is often lower and showers tend to build up over there to the East along the MacPherson Range towards the Gold Coast.

If you are going through Cunningham's Gap, you need to consider that if Amberley Airspace is active, 4,500' will be your maximum altitude crossing East to Boonah. Other options to the East that will avoid Amberley Airspace are Teviot Gap(between Mt Superbus and Wilson's Peak), the gap next door between Wilson's Peak and Mt Barney - both of which will take you past Maroon Dam, and the gap between Mt Barney and Mt Lindesay. When you are getting close, you can now easily check NAIPS for Amberley weather as the ATIS is now listed as well. If it is information Z(Zulu) - tower is closed, restricted areas are de-active and you are good to go higher if you like.

This happened to me for real in an elderly C182L that I was using for my scenic flights about 15 years ago, which had a pitot tube with one of those flip-flop bug deflectors on the front of it. It jammed at about 45 knots and I persisted with the take-off(wrong decision) thinking that the extra airflow when I accelerated to cruise speed would open it out fully. It didn't. I then flew the plane on the tacho and did quite a nice landing and parked close to my car. I then got a can of WD-40 out of the boot and thoroughly sprayed the offending flip-flop and then proceeded with the pax on my scenic flight.

As far as Whitsunday Airport is concerned, they have not changed their requirement which stopped me going there 23 years ago when I was building time towards my CPL, namely that they require 100 hours in command before you land there, which I didn't have and I suspect WetBlanket wouldn't have either at this stage of his or her training. I just landed at Proserpine and caught a taxi into Airlie Beach and still managed to have a bloody good time.

Murgon breakfast fly-in($15) is this Saturday - 14 Oct - with spag bol and a movie for $10 on the Friday night(BYO tent or stay at their new bunkhouse or the motel in town). This is good practice for your short field technique on a bush airstrip.

The council's reply to me about NOTAMs for fuel was, "I understand Airservices will not issue a NOTAM for this type of matter." I don't know if Airservices issues notices for this or not but the SDRC obviously thinks they won't.

A notice that, "AVGAS IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE AT THE WARWICK AERODROME" is now up on the council's website. Although it is well-buried on the Aerodromes page, I suppose this is something positive.

By "we," I meant my wife and I, so co-ownership. 70 hours is the very approximate point where you go past the point where the overheads, the annual check, repairs, parking/hangarage, insurance costs etc. equal the cost of renting, and for the remaining flights to the next annual, you are just pouring in fuel and paying landing fees. Remember for private operations under Schedule 5, you can exceed the 100 hours limit. Your insurance will also be much cheaper if just you are flying it. I was prepared to scale down my aims, just to have a plane that I could use whenever I wanted to and not have to deal with a group or syndicate about who wants to use it and when, or the whines and whinges about who did the nose first landing and made the nose wheel shimmy! My wife actually asked me what was the cheapest possible plane that I would be happy flying and would do what we wanted it to do. The answer is in my profile on this forum. Pearo - I suppose you want a glass panel as well, perhaps an autopilot that actually works? A CSU that does not bust a seal and spray a fine mist of oil over the windscreen? You have to "cut one's coat according to one's cloth" when purchasing an aircraft. I am talking about entry-level GA. The simpler the plane, the cheaper it will be to operate. I would consider a "half decent IFR capable 4 seater (would prefer 6)" to be a doctor or surgeon's aircraft or someone on that sort of income. C210s and Bonanzas are even called "doctor-killers." A doctor I know used to own a C210 and saw it as unnecessary and too expensive to operate and scaled back to a C182, which he has been very happy with for the last 10 years or so. Unless you are using those 4-6 seats on almost every flight, a bigger aircraft is a waste of money. I operated C182s and C182RGs and C206s as a commercial pilot. These were all great planes in their own way but I had a business to pay the bills to keep them flying. When I couldn't fill the 206, I scaled back to the 182s. All the extra bits cost extra money to maintain - the autopilot, the CSU, the IFR panel, retractable gear, the extra two cylinders in the engine, the extra seats...

Yes, they are limited for the moment. You will be doing recreational flights and trying to share your costs with your passengers in the short term. If you go to places like Straddie, you will be limited by the number of passengers you can safely carry. On a windy day, you will need performance+ to climb out through the wind-shear and you won't have this if you are in any way heavy. I would recommend only 2 POB and reduced fuel to begin with. If you didn't scare yourself too much with this, then try 3 POB and reduced fuel. I do not recommend 4 POB in a 172, unless there is a 180HP engine at the front and you have reduced fuel. The Clifton fly-in on a hot day is another similar problem to this but without the terrain to worry about. Long term, you should look for tax deductibility for your flights and equity in a property to use to buy a plane along the lines of my comments I made to you on another forum on this topic or find the extra income required from somewhere else. A rule of thumb for GA is if you are flying 70 hours or more per year, you should be buying, not renting. We do 60-70 hours most years.

Aplund, instead of surfing the net, you should be burning some shoe leather and talking to some people about costs. Just say you are looking at purchasing a C172M/PA-28 and go and ask Ian Colville at Ian Aviation, Ron at Rapair and whoever owns Flight Maintenance, now that Peter has sold it(Jay will be able to help). All these workshop owners are approachable but busy people. Phone beforehand, make a time or ascertain a time that they will be there and ask them, what would it cost for an annual(100 hourly) plus fixing the things that they would typically find wrong with a C172M/PA-28? This year(2017) will be a particularly expensive year as everyone with control cables more than 15 years old will have to replace them. A normal year for us at Archerfield would be $5000. The worst was $10,000 - engine replacement costs and $17,000 - corrosion repairs involving the removal of both wings. Don't forget to also visit David Paynter at Brisbane Aero Engines for his input about the typical overhaul costs of a Lycoming O-320 engine. As a person working full time at a career as a professional, would you have the time or the skills to tackle the hours of owner-maintenance required for a RA-AUS aircraft? Many/most? of the owners of ultra-light aircraft are retired or semi-retired tradies with a solid background of workshop experience from their working lives, which equips them very well for keeping their aircraft maintained and flying.